During her chess career, Susan Polgar didn't like playing in women's tournaments. Seems pretty strange, since she was one of the best chess players ever, regardless of gender.

(Susan's sister, previously profiled Judit, plain out refused to play against just women. But let's talk about Susan.)

In 1986, Susan was the world's highest-rated female player. She was just 17. FIDE, chess's governing body, did something inexplicable: it added 100 ratings point to every woman in the world. That is, every woman except Susan. Their explanation is that Susan mostly played against men and... no, we don't get it either. The truth is that the always-colluding Soviets didn't want a Hungarian to top the list.

Susan recovered and pushed her rating high enough to become the first woman to earn grandmaster status. Then, in the 1990s, she changed her mind, and started to enter women's tournaments. In 1996, she became women's world champion.

Susan was all set to defend her crown, but pregnancy intervened. She fought for postponement of the match, asking for more time to recover (and, also, for the match to be moved from China, to avoid giving her challenger a home-board advantage), but to no avail. FIDE decided to strip Susan of her title.

It's very understandable why Susan didn't like playing in women's tournaments...